Mueller offers sly impeachment bait

Robert Mueller’s 11 A.M. statement to the media today stuck to what was in his report (which he said “speaks for itself”) but selectively highlighted and sequenced points intended to damage President Trump, providing obvious bait for impeachment proceedings. Here is one example (transcript):

[I]f we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.

It is not the job of prosecutors to state that a suspect “clearly did not commit a crime” — only to state whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute.

In discussing the second part of the report on obstruction, he repeated the point:

[I]f we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.

Immediately, he followed with this:

The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long-standing department policy a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office.